The early Quakers, the peace testimony and masculinity in England, 1660–1720

As Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard have asserted, most research into the history of masculinity has concentrated on dominant groups, while more work is needed on the range of codes of behaviour available to other men. Arguably, no aspect of seventeenth-century Quaker behaviour ran more contrary to dominant norms than the insistence on pacifism and rejection of violence. This article considers Friends’ pacifism and its relation to masculinity, including its implications for local society, showing how it related to Quaker rejections of domestic violence and to the violent masculinity of the alehouse. However, non-violent forms of control were used to uphold patriarchal norms and to control women and those whose behaviour was considered to be inappropriate. Developing the insights of the social scientist Kenneth Boulding and philosopher Steve Smith, this article explores how Quaker practices of exclusion and ostracism can be seen as highly effective forms of coercion, even if they did not involve physical force, and in doing so highlight how seventeenth- and twentieth-century interpretations of pacifism differ. Quaker identity and discipline were maintained in strikingly effective ways which often mirrored patriarchal norms, and indeed Friends’ self-perception is shown to have been highly controlled in order to maintain a collective reputation for sobriety, honesty and restraint

Sharing their past with the nation: re-enactment and testimony on British television

Sharing their past with the nation: reenactment and testimony on British televisio

Beyond the witness: the layering of historical testimonies on British television

Beyond the witness: the layering of historical testimonies on British televisio

\u27Vain Unsettled Fashions\u27: The Early Durham Friends and Popular Culture c. 1660-1725

Participation in popular, or worldly, culture was a moot point for the early Friends. Although they were not encouraged to do so many still took part in aspects of male or female culture, but experienced tension between Quaker and \u27carnal\u27 ideals of behaviour. Female Friends were expected to limit their clothing according to the edicts of their Yearly Meeting, although female culture treated clothing as a medium of exchange and\u27 gifting clothing was central to female social life. This proved difficult for women such as Sarah Kirkby (d.1692) of Auckland, a fabric seller, who traded with non-Quakers and could not have avoided the expectation that she would participate in aspects of female culture. Even Margaret Fell\u27s daughters succumbed, as their household book testifies, although Durham Quakers and the Fells\u27 meeting at Swarthmore agreed that silk weaving and selling lace respectively were inappropriate trades for a Friend.\u27 From the 1680s Women\u27s Quarterly Meetings sent epistles on the subject to Monthly and Preparative Meetings, who reported back their findings. At almost every women\u27s meeting lists of forbidden garments were noted and their wearers, usually young women, were reprimanded. Female Friends who deviated from this rule were likely to be condemned as \u27disorderly walkers\u27, and the censure of their families was expected. Such clothing was not merely seen as \u27light\u27 or wasteful, but deeply immoral as it sullied the image male Friends had constructed of women as symbols of the purity of the restored Church. Men were treated with more sympathy than women if they strayed, and the temptations they experienced were more often related to the alehouse than to clothing. Women were sometimes accused of drunkenness and disorder. A disorderly wife was seen as bringing dishonour to Quakerism, as it gave the impression that Quaker men could not control their wives, even though they had arguably already taken steps to do so by instituting separate meetings and limiting the activities of female ministers. However, wives of alcoholic husbands were advised to treat them with respect, not contempt. Friends seem to have appreciated the tensions faced by many men, who had formerly participated in alehouse culture alongside their peers, and found it difficult to break this tie to their old lifestyles. By the early eighteenth century the \u27perruque controversy\u27 led Quaker men also to consider their own appearances and condemn the use of wigs as bodily adornment. Although this may seem to suggest equality, alongside their uniform rejection of ostentation surrounding any rite of passage regardless of the participants\u27 social status, it ultimately led to John Wesley\u27s condemnation of Quaker costume as a \u27uniform\u27. This also gave rise to the belief that there was a uniformity of thinking, which had abandoned the originality of earlier thought, most notably their justification of women preachers

No one wants to be lectured at by a woman – women and history on TV

No one wants to be lectured at by a woman – women and history on T

Eighteenth-century Quakerism and the rehabilitation of James Nayler, seventeenth-century radical

Although the first Quakers aligned with history superfluous tradition, detrimental to true appreciation of the inward voice of God, by the early eighteenth century they had produced their first histories as a defence against Anglican allegations of continued disorder and enthusiasm. At the same time, pressure to publish the collected works of James Nayler, a convicted blasphemer, proved particularly contentious. Leo Damrosch has sought to understand what Nayler thought he was doing in the 1650s; this study considers what motivated later Quakers to censor his works and accounts of his life, and demonstrates how English Friends in particular sought to revise the popular image of Quakerism by rewriting history

Transportation and Taxes: What New Hampshire Residents Think About Maintaining Highways and Bridges

In this brief, authors Linda Fogg, Lawrence Hamilton, and Erin Bell share New Hampshire residents’ responses to questions on the state’s transportation infrastructure in surveys conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Granite State Poll during 2016 and 2017. They report that only 36 percent of state residents are aware of the worsening conditions of New Hampshire highways and bridges. A thin majority support increased spending on public transportation, while 42 percent support more spending on highway maintenance and environmental protection. Disaster preparation and stormwater management are seen as lower priorities. There is little agreement on the main source of funds—for example, tolls, gas taxes, per-mile assessments—to maintain highways and bridges. Majorities would support a gas tax increase of 10 cents or somewhat more if needed to maintain state highways and bridges. Both awareness of infrastructure conditions and willingness to support tax increases to maintain highways and bridges vary by party affiliation

Supporting Norwegian Friends in their struggle for religious freedom: correspondence between English and Norwegian Quakers, c.1840-1870

This paper considers the wealth of written material –particularly letters - preserved in Norway and the UK, which reveals the long-distance, numerically dense and long-term communication networks between Norwegian and English Friends in the mid-C19th, and especially between South West Norway and North East England, maintained in the main through regular written correspondence, the circulation of the same amongst Friends, and occasional visits over a relatively long period of time in order to preserve the initially tiny community of Norwegian Friends and also, arguably, to offer Anglophone Friends a spiritually inspiring window into a group of recent converts with the poverty and simplicity of the earliest English Quaker converts. The research from which this paper arises includes, then, analysis of a wider body of letters dating from the 1810s, when the first Norwegian prisoners of war, during the Napoleonic Wars, contacted English Friends to signal their interest in Quakerism, to the 1870s; several hundred have been transcribed so far. Key players include Stavanger teacher, translator and abstinence campaigner Asbjorn Kloster, stalwart Stavanger Friend Endre Dahl, Northumberland minister George Richardson, and Elias Tastad, former prisoner of war and very early Quaker convert

Senior Recital: Erin Bell, piano

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Senior Recital: Erin Bell, piano.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1839/thumbnail.jp